By Salvatore Babones

Europe’s New Aristocracy

It has become commonplace on both left and
right to point to a democracy
deficit in the institutions of the European Union. European decision-making
is shifting from the national level to the European Union level, and not just
for EU member countries. Even for non-members like Norway and Switzerland,
economic realities dictate that national laws are often crafted to meet EU
requirements.

Yet many European (and global)
intellectuals seem not to be bothered by the lack of democracy at the European
level. They see the EU as a force for good in the world, even in the EU’s
member countries.

Many look to the European Union and other
transnational institutions to protect a host of individual rights, ranging from
refugees’ rights to claim asylum, homosexuals’ rights to marry, and everything
in between.

The universalization of human rights is
surely one of the great accomplishments of the nascent 21st century. But it is
increasingly bumping up against one of the great accomplishments of the 20th
century: the universalization of electoral democracy.

It would be very convenient for global
enlightenment if substantial national majorities in countries around the world
consistently supported the continuous expansion of individual rights. But what
happens when they don’t? When push comes to shove, which universal should take
precedence: 20th century democracy or 21st century rights?

Old Democracies,
New Rights

The conflict between the individual and the
state was supposed to be solved by democracy. People accept the rule and rules
of the democratic state because the democratic state is ultimately accountable
to the people. But of course there is a difference between “the people” and “the
person,” and that difference can cause problems.

In some of the most extreme manifestations
of this tension, states draft individual persons into military service and
imprison individual persons for crimes. But states also restrict individual
freedoms in myriad other ways, some liberal (prohibiting employment
discrimination) and some illiberal (prohibiting recreational drug use). There
is no government without governance, and governance means restrictions on
individuals.

Liberal governance is the heart of the 21st
century zeitgeist. The list of individual rights that are widely proclaimed as
basic human rights is rapidly expanding. But proclaiming a universal human
right and enacting a specific individual right are two different things.

Universal human rights tend to be
proclaimed at international conferences by experts and activists, while
specific individual rights must be enacted by national politicians who are
accountable to democratic electorates. Unsurprisingly, these two groups often
don’t see eye-to-eye. When they don’t, human rights activists tend to turn to
the courts rather than turn to the people.

An internationalized, Europeanized intellectual elite both
inside and outside the UK values its freedom to live and work across European
borders more than it values democracy itself.

And that’s a problem. Rights granted by the
people ultimately come to be accepted by the people as legitimate. Rights
granted by courts are always of dubious democratic legitimacy, and may
ultimately be overturned by democratic action.

The recent Brexit referendum over the
United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union was fundamentally about
democracy versus rights. The rhetoric of those who wanted to leave the EU was a
rhetoric of national democratic sovereignty. The rhetoric of those who wanted
to stay was a rhetoric of individual freedom of movement.

When the votes were counted, Britain’s intellectual
elites were shocked to discover that the British people had rejected their
exhortations to vote stay. The leave camp won with a decisive democratic
majority. In theory, that should have been the end of the issue. The people had
spoken.

But stay camp activists dominated the
mainstream media, floating a multitude of mechanisms through which the voice of
the people could be overturned: Parliament could refuse to enact the required
legislation, the Scottish regional government could try to veto a leave law, a
second referendum could be held to repudiate the first.

Many in Britain and abroad even called on
the other European Union members to impose harsh economic penalties on the
United Kingdom to punish it for leaving.

The Brexit debate and post-Brexit hysteria
made it hard to escape the conclusion that an internationalized, Europeanized
intellectual elite both inside and outside the UK values its freedom to live
and work across European borders more than it values democracy itself.

Majority
Rule

Belief in democracy means accepting,
however reluctantly, the rule of the majority. It may be that at times there
are higher values than democracy. In extreme circumstances it may even be
heroic to fight against the will of the people. But though people who fight
against the will of the people may sometimes be heroes, they cannot be called
democrats.

Today many of Europe’s elites lay claim to
the mantle of democracy while actively seeking to undermine the will of the
people. They have usually done so in the name of human rights and the rule of
law, and they often argue that without human rights and rule of law there can
be no democracy.

That is true enough. But do Brexit, the PiS
government in Poland, the Fidesz government in Hungary, and anti-immigration
parties in Austria, France, and the Netherlands really constitute threats to
human rights and the rule of law? Or are they merely anti-EU and thus “undesirable”
elements as seen from the standpoint of Europeanized intellectual elites?

The current left-nationalist government of
Poland has been labeled a failing
democracy by Politico and a democracy
at risk by Foreign Affairs. The contrastingly right-nationalist government
of Hungary is routinely characterized as a democracy in crisis by political
pundits. Both were elected by large majorities in undisputedly free and fair
elections.

When Austria narrowly elected a green party
president in May, the BBC reported that his “far right” opponent had been thwarted in his
efforts to secure the office. The defeated nationalist candidate disputed the
result because of irregularities in the vote counting process. Austria’s constitutional
court agreed
with him and has ordered a new election.

It is irresponsible to advocate the overthrow of democracy in a
situation like the Brexit vote where life and liberty are not at stake. Sometimes
we all have to accept limits on our pursuit of happiness.

Nationalist parties across Europe are
vilified in the international press for their supposed (and often very real)
illiberal tendencies. But liberalism and democracy are not the same thing. Did
the United States only become a democracy in 2015, when the Supreme Court
affirmed the right of homosexual couples to marry? Is Ireland still not a
democracy because it suppresses women’s rights to seek abortions?

Ironically, the self-declared Scottish
National Party and the nationalist parties of Catalonia are very popular among European
and international intellectuals, presumably because they embrace liberal values
and EU membership for their nations-in-formation.

International intellectuals seem to find
liberal nationalism acceptable, reserving the use of “nationalist” as a
negative epithet only for illiberal parties that oppose further EU integration.

Self-Evident

In 1776 the founders of the United States
of America declared that it was “self-evident, that all men [sic] are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Certain universal human rights may indeed
be self-evident. But most specific individual rights are subject to democratic
debate.

Most of the time, individual rights go
hand-in-hand with democracy. After all, democracy means the rule of the people,
and the people generally prefer to have rights. Most people most of the time
vote to expand individual rights, not to restrict them.

It may be appropriate to challenge the will
of the people when democracy trammels on human rights that most of the world’s experts
consider absolutely basic and universal. But if democracy is to survive, such
challenges should face a high bar.

It is irresponsible to advocate the
overthrow of democracy in a situation like the Brexit vote where life and
liberty are not at stake. The pursuit of happiness is a wonderful thing, but
sometimes we all have to accept limits on our pursuit of happiness. Limits on
the right to work in other countries should not be equated with religious
persecution or genocide.

This is neither a legal nor a scientific
argument. It is a moral argument, an argument about what is self-evidently true
and what is open to debate.

In past centuries it seemed self-evident to
many people that slavery was an acceptable and indeed “natural” arrangement. No
more.

Today it seems self-evident to nearly
everyone that discrimination based on gender is unacceptable, and it seems to
be increasingly self-evident to many people that discrimination based on sexual
orientation is unacceptable. Such trends are to be applauded. But as
these changes illustrate, self-evidence is a moving target. In democratic
societies we gauge self-evidence via majority rule.

Too many intellectuals are prepared to gauge
self-evidence by their own standards. This is dangerous, both for intellectuals
and for democracy. It is dangerous for democracy because it legitimates
anti-democratic stances of all kinds, not just rights-based stances.

But it is also dangerous for intellectuals.
Most intellectuals depend directly on the generosity of the public for their
very livelihood. Bureaucrats, Eurocrats, politicians, and professors are mostly
public employees. They — we — need the support of the public in order to
continue our work.

Intellectuals are vitally important for the
health of democracy. They play an indispensable role in framing democratic
debates. But when intellectuals stop presenting
options and start demanding outcomes, their democratic function has come to an
end. Maybe that’s why so many intellectuals retreat to academia, a
self-referential world that is isolated from the rough and tumble of practical
politics.

The tyranny of a meritocratic intellectual
class, Aristotle’s tyranny of the best, is a tyranny all the same. Aristotle
called it aristocracy, and he thought it was the best form of government. But
then, Aristotle was no democrat.